Amazing how quickly a month can pass when you're focused and completely enrolled in something you enjoy so much. Time actually seemed to disappear for nearly a month without any major responsibilities or worries. I must say 24 hours of a yogic lifestyle a day was about the most relaxing, healing, growing experience I've enjoyed since...well...

After two months in India I was ready to park myself in one place for a while and the ashram seemed the perfect home. On arrival I knew I had chosen wisely as there were two geodesik domes (similar to those scattering the playa at Burning Man) for meditation out front. The staff were amazing and the head organizer had a personality of gold. Many of those who ran the establishment had great senses of humor and musical talents so we were able to casually experience many deeper aspects of the Hindu tradition from chanting to fire arti (devotional) services. The ashram is located outside of Nasik (5-ish hours from Bombay) in the Sahyadri Mountain range. A center for yogis and holy sites, this area holds the second oldest Shiva temple in India dating around 2,000 years or so. We all feared the worst in monsoon season, but managed to have 3 weeks of nearly perfect, and yes COOL, weather before our one week of terrential downpoor. The rains wash all the critters to higher ground, but other than a few huge scorpions, a giant rat, and a 7-foot cobra, the most diverse array of bird song was the ambience that nature provided. Our group was comprised of about 40 people from every continent around the globe and made for quite the palette of story-telling and "small-worlding" you could imagine. As it turns out, one of the girls from South Africa was at the new years eve party I spun at down in Cape Town. The food was quite bland most of the time and lacked much variety but was plentiful and when special sweet dishes did appear, all's spirits were raised. We were given one day a week to hit town for correspondence with the outside world. Life on the ashram was quite peaceful with 5am wakeup calls and adventure only came when we braved the city. Although we did manage to pass around some bug of diarrhea that cycled multiple times through the group leaving only a couple spared. It was the most intense cleanse we practiced over the 4 weeks and it wasn't even a part of the program.

On one of our city trips we experienced the violence of the taxi drivers on strike as they managed to chuck a boulder through the winshield of the local public bus. Luckily no one was harmed, and the bus driver brushed the glass shards off his seat and kept going. Only in India. Another time I hiked from the Trimbukeshwa Shiva Temple up into the mountains above to bathe in one of Shiva's locks of hair spilling a few hundred feet over the peaks as the monsoons nourished the green valleys below.

After the course was completed a few of us headed straight to the 5-star Taj Hotel for a swim in the pool (cooincidentally the only sunny day we had seen in over a week) for a swim and a bit of pampering. At about the same time, the monsoons hit full force creating major problems for all of us trying to get back into Mumbai, a city that suffers perhaps the most as the floods raise. From arriving to the train station late, to getting on the wrong train and everyone literally diving off with baggage flying as the train quickly accelerated, to people and bags being left on the train, to getting on another wrong train, to delays, to sinking two cabs, to getting stranded in a suburb outside of Mumbai, the adventure ranked as probably the largest I've experienced in India. But, just as every previous circumstance, the blessings came at all the right times. And the icing on this cake was sweet! The area we got stranded in was more of an upscale area and we happened into a 3-star for some eats when our royal treatment was laid out before us. We managed to celebrate one of the girl's birthdays in style with a feast that just didn't seem to end and a staff that bent over backwards in any possible way they could.

I'm now safely back in Mumbai with Ishwar and catching a plane to Rome--what?--very late tonight. Plans continue to change as originally I was to set out for home after my training with a brief stop in the UK. Well, generous friends and opportunity have allowed for a small extension of my trip which will now take me to the ancient city of Rome, allow me to work on staff at the international trance festival of Sonica in Italy, spend a few days on a beach in Barcelona, teach a yoga workshop at BOOM, a 10 day international trance festival in Portugal, and potentially take a short jaunt through England and Scotland before hitting the states.

I count my blessings daily and continue to struggle to remain in each and every moment.

As for the knowlege I saught in the last month of training, it seemed like a guidebook for how to live a happy, healthy, balanced lifestyle. From physical conditional to mental awareness, to spiritual exploration, yoga certainly seems to be the "science of self-realization." With so many tools, and 8 "limbs" of yogic practice, and about 15 new books from the great yogis of the Bihar School of Yoga and ancient Shiva tradition, I am more than fueled and equipped for my adventure of self-discovery that lies ahead.